


Wayne Gothic in Repose

by MaldaineD



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-10
Updated: 2016-09-10
Packaged: 2018-08-14 07:56:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8004838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaldaineD/pseuds/MaldaineD
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In this little piece of fluff, Tim tries to figure out how to tell Conner that he wants to date him, Barbara gives Jason some life advice, and Stephanie and Cassandra initiate a game of hide-and-seek.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wayne Gothic in Repose

The snow clung to the roof with gentle indignation, the kind that Jason was too familiar with, and the reason that he sat on the roof, alone, in the snow, with a beer in one hand and a smoke in the other. They didn’t want him down there when he was like this. It was never good for him to be around people when he was like this. He regretted ripping the sleeves off of his favorite jacket because it was colder than he originally imagined. 

He’d deal with it. He decided that he wanted to make them worry a little bit, to get away so they’d think he’d run off again. Jason needed it. He needed to know that they didn’t want him to go away again….

He needed them to be afraid.

~~  
Barbara was sprawled in front of the fire, books to her left and her right, a computer in front of her, and her wheelchair pushed up against the hearth. It was a trick she learned in the winter. Keep the seat warm, always.

“What are you working on?” Dick asked.

“Dissertation I’m giving at Gotham Academy tomorrow. Essentially it's on the presence of online identities,” Barbara responded as she flipped the page.  
“Have you seen Jason?”

“Nope. He was acting weird after dinner, so I figured I’d let him do his thing for a little while before I checked in on him.”

Dick nodded and gave her a kiss at the crown of her head. Her eyes lingered on his butt as he walked away before they, unwillingly, drifted back to her work. She knew her feet were warm. She just needed them to feel warm.

~~

The knock was subtle enough that Tim almost didn’t realize he heard anything at all, but then again, he was him so he knew he heard something. He started to understand what Conner was talking about…

“Come in,” Tim said.

“Hey, have you seen Jason?” Dick asked, his worried look sprawled across his face.

“I haven’t. Why?”

“Well, I haven’t seen him since dinner, and neither has Barbara. I was just getting a little worried.”

Tim gave Dick a quick smile. He looked down at the phone by his side. He’d been punching the home button for two hours, every time hoping that it would update, tell him that he had a new message or that he missed a call, but it hadn’t gone off. He really wanted Conner to text him back. He wanted to let him know how he felt, but he wanted the conversation to start with Conner.

 

He needed to take a break from it.

“I’ll help you look,” Tim said, as he got up, leaving the phone stranded on the pristine bed.

~~

He wanted a little peace. He needed a little pea…

“Hey, Damian!”

“Not interested.”

~~

The cold was starting to get to him, and it made him nervous. He could feel his right hand shaking, the kind of shake that made him scared. Sometimes it was hard acting tough. He laughed at himself, looking out into the crystal clear sky. It was rare that they got a quiet night at the house. He should have been taking advantage of it, but instead, he was up here, moping, and probably getting some degree of frostbite. He couldn’t feel his arms anymore, but Jason was determined to stay up on the roof as long as he could.  
He pulled another beer from the snow, cracked it open, and looked over the mansion’s lawn. The topiary cast oblong shadows in the moonlight, and the drive was still, the wind calm, and the snow shimmering slightly. 

He should have been at peace, yet he felt like there was so much left that he couldn’t do, couldn’t obtain. He pulled one of his handguns from the holster on his sweatpants. He looked down the barrel, aiming at the vacant space in his life.

“Bang,” he murmured and took another sip. 

Booze and firearms didn’t go very well together, so he put the gun back into the holster, and scratched his stomach.

~~

“Can’t say that I’ve seen him, but I’d be happy to help,” Stephanie said as she nearly tossed the book across the room.

“You clearly didn’t want to finish your homework,” Dick said.

“She never really does,” Tim said. He frowned a bit, realizing that he did it again.

“Cassie…” Stephanie looked over at the other bed in the room, a puzzled look on her face. “Weird, she was here just a second ago.”

Cassie ran by the door shouting, “I bet I can find him before you can!”

~~

“It’s too quiet,” Barbara said, looking suspiciously over the top of her glasses. “What are they getting themselves into now?”

~~

“So, how are things going with the Titans?” Dick asked.

“Fine. It’s sort of weird being a leader. I never really thought I had much affinity for it, but the more I do it, the easier it seems to get.”

“It’s natural for you. You pick up things pretty quick, Tim.”

“Do, do you think I’m too full of myself?”

“Why would you think that?”

“It’s just something Conner, uh, Superboy said to me the other day.”

Dick stopped, turning back to Tim. He wasn’t exactly sure how to talk with Tim about this, and it was one of the few times in recent memory he felt like he needed Bruce there instead of just wanting him there. Dick took a breath and sighed.

“So, I do act that way,” Tim said, looking back.

“Sometimes, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Maybe now that you know, it’s something you can work on, you know, improve on. A leader who thinks they know everything is bound to make more mistakes. Listening to your team is probably the first step in being a better leader for them.”

Tim smiled a bit.

~~

“Here, let me help you,” Jason said.

Barbara put one hand on the outside edge of the window and swung her feet around, and Jason grabbed her other arm and put it around his shoulder and carried her to the other chair set up on the roof.

“I brought a surprise for you. I left in on my wheelchair,” Barbara said, pointing over at the open window.

Jason went over and found that there was another six-pack on a pile of Wayne Manor’s warmest blankets. Jason walked back to his chair, boots crunching in the snow. He draped one of the blankets around Barbara’s shoulders, another over her lap. He placed the beer in the snow next to him.

“Hey, thanks for the blankets, but those beers aren’t just for you,” she said, beckoning for him to hand one to her.

~~

“Okay, but you’ve got to show me that move again,” Stephanie said, trying to mimic the movements as best as she could.

“I’ve tried explaining it to you a hundred times, and you never seem to get it down.”

“But this time I will, I promise!”

“If we don’t focus in, we won’t find Jason before the boys do, and I’m not losing to Tim.”

Stephanie rolled her eyes and started looking under the beds in the guest rooms. “Do you really think he’d come in here?”

“We already checked the Batcave, and we saw the boys come out of the pantry. Those are the only two places that I could think to look for him,” Cassie said, assuming Jason was hiding in the closet with a box of cookies.

“But what if he’s washing some of his sweatpants.”

“I didn’t think of that!”

~~

“So, I’ve been waiting for him to respond, you know, so I can get the ball rolling,” Tim explained.

“Let me get this straight, you’re going to ask Superboy out, and you’re going to do it by turning a conversation about you being a know-it-all into showing him that you know how much he likes you?”

“Yeah,” Tim said.

“I think you’re missing the point of what he said in the first place…”

~~

“The truth is, I’m afraid,” Jason said.

Barbara finished her beer and crushed it in her hand, then she tossed it at his head in one fluid motion. Jason had been so transfixed on some magnetic force in the distance that when it hit him he nearly fell out of his seat and into the snow. 

“Well, instead of sulking, why don’t you talk to us?”

“I, I don’t know how…”

“Some of us know a bit about PTSD.”

“Honestly, I just didn’t think you liked me that much, so I was afraid to ask,” Jason said with a laugh.

“Well, while I don’t see us being the best of friends, it doesn’t stop us from being a family. You can talk to me anytime you need, and you don’t have to get frostbite trying to figure out how to do it.”

“With the blankets though, it’s kind of nice.”

“It’s certainly pretty,” Barbara said.

“Thanks, you know, for sitting out here with me,” Jason said.

“I’ve thoroughly enjoyed it, Jason.”

~~

The laughter was quiet at first, but when Dick stuck his head out the third floor window, it was pretty clear where it was coming from. He nudged Tim a little bit who was so lost in thought that he nearly fell over. 

“Hey, I think I found Jason,” Dick said.

“Well good, at least we can beat the girls in hide-and-seek,” Tim said.

“At least?”

“Well, I don’t feel like tonight is going to end on a happier note, so it’ll be nice to win something.”

“You never know. Instead of worrying so much about the outcome, why not just try being yourself. It’s why we all started loving you, and Cassie, and Stephanie. You are the reason you have a place in this family. Maybe that’s the same quality that will make a Superboy fly head over heels for you.”

“Did...did you just make a really bad…”

“Race you to the roof!” Dick shouted as he burst through the door to Bruce’s room.

~~

“What are you guys doing out here? It’s freezing,” Dick said.

“I didn’t quite notice,” Barbara said, “Jason was just teaching me how to shotgun a beer, but maybe it would be best for us to return to the fire?”

“I think I’d like that,” Jason said, stumbling just a little bit as he stood up.

Barbara slipped the gun from the holster on his side as he stood, placing it behind her back. Jason wasn’t any the wiser.

“Why don’t I help you inside,” Tim said, taking a hold of Jason’s shoulder as he guided him through the window. His hands were frigid, but he looked...happy.

“Thanks, Tim,” Jason said as the two of them felt the rush of the heaters.

“Everything okay?” Dick asked Barbara.

“Fine. Just trying to get to know him a little better. Maybe getting to know myself a little better, too.”

Dick wrapped Barbara’s arm over his shoulder and hoisted her up, into the window and into her chair. She gave him a little kiss on the hand.

~~

Cassie threw the punch, and Stephanie grabbed her wrist, bringing her over the shoulder, to the ground, and into a perfect pin. After a second, Cassie tapped out, and looked over at Steph with a big smile on her face.

“That was perfectly executed.”

“I know!”

Jason was asleep on the couch, but had helped Cassie and Stephanie pull the practice mats out from in the Batcave before he crashed. Barbara’s feet were by the fire as she finished typing up the end of her dissertation. It was missing something, but she wasn’t quite sure what else he could say without giving away a few personal details.

Dick was sitting in a chair next to her, stoking the fire every now and again. He looked good sitting there, and Barbara couldn’t help but smile at the image of him out of the corner of her eye.

Damian was sitting on the staircase, looking at the rest of them, only coming down when Dick motioned that there was room on the couch by the sleeping Jason Todd. 

Tim was still looking down at his phone. In the two hours it took them to find Jason, it hadn’t rung once. Another slap to the mat snapped him out of his daze as Cassie taught Stephanie an even more complicated grapple. He felt his fingers lingering over the screen, wanting so badly to just send Conner something.

Everyone looked over when his phone actually rang. He was so nervous he couldn’t look.

“Conner’s at the front door…. I’m, I’m gonna go let him in,” Tim said. “Why is he here? Can I let him in? Do you guys mind? Oh god…”

“The more the merrier,” Barbara said as she closed her laptop.

As Conner Kent came into the room, Dick couldn’t help but notice how warm it felt, and how full it was. When Jason woke up, he walked over to Dick, and sat on the arm of his chair. He looked over at all of the family, Cassie trying not to get hit in the face, and Stephanie trying as hard as she could to not hit Cass in the face. Tim doing a terrible job at flirting, and Barbara shouting at her protege to follow through on her strikes.

“Do you remember when we were young?” Jason asked looking at Tim blushing every time Conner even glanced at him.

“Did any of us ever get the chance to be young?” Dick answered.

“Does that make you afraid?”

Dick looked at the room again, and shook his head. Would he change some things? Maybe, but, this, right here, it just felt right to him.

“Me, too,” Jason said. “Me, too.”


End file.
